Teacher Competence

  Since teaching is much more than a task, and involves values or assumptions  concerning education, learning and society, the concept of teacher competences may resonate differently in different national contexts.  The range and complexity of competences required for teaching in the 21st century is so great that any one individual is unlikely to have them all, nor to have developed them all to the same high degree. Attention must therefore be focused also on the competences or attributes of an education system or of a teaching team.

Teaching competences are thus complex combinations of knowledge, skills, understanding, values and attitudes, leading to effective action in situation.

 

                               The National Council of Teacher Education has identified ten teacher competencies for making the teachers professionally content. One of the first and foremost obligations of teacher is to ensure that whether the parents and the community are accepting the importance and usefulness of their efforts. Clarity of thought, deep understanding of educational theories and through knowledge of various educational trends, pedagogical methods, techniques etc. 

Teacher Competencies have been categorized on the basis of purpose being completed by these. These are as follows: 

               (1)Contextual Competencies

                      One of the first and foremost obligations of teacher is to ensure that whether the parents and the community are accepting the importance and usefulness of their efforts. For this teacher should have the ability to understand various context such as historical background, present status of socio- economic, cultural, linguistic and religious context of the family milieu and the community profile. They should be able to conduct surveys for finding out reason for poor enrolment, poor performance and causes of certain problems like wastage and stagnation etc. which hinder the process of education .

(2) Conceptual Competencies

The teacher should have competencies identified under it : Clarity of thought, deep understanding of educational theories and through knowledge of various educational trends, pedagogical methods, techniques etc.

·     They should know significant characteristics of child development at different stages to enable them to transact curriculum effectively.

·     They should have knowledge of classroom organization and management too which would help them in organizing curricular and co-curricular activities quite effectively in and outside classroom.

·     Concepts and educational implications of globalization, modernization, liberalization and privatization have to be understood by teachers.

(3) Content Related Competencies

                             These includes are-

Ø Full mastery over the content of the subject that they have to teach.  

Ø They should find out the hard sots and gaps in curriculum which require explanation and elaboration.

Ø They should identify such areas from the curriculum where there is enough scope for undertaking joyful activities, individual and group learning etc. 

(4) Transactional Competencies

                         Educational transactional competency refers to the skill of day to day teaching to achieve educational objectives effectively through meaningful interaction between teachers and pupils and the environment by using different methods, activities and technology in an integrated and effective manner. Thus it implies that the teacher should be able:

Ø To organize verity of activities such as storytelling, singing, games, field visits, celebration of national, social and cultural events to make teaching learning process joyful, participatory and relevant.

Ø To prepare appropriate teaching aids and other teaching learning material to support and enhance the effectiveness of teaching-learning process.

Ø To integrate continuous evaluation while transacting subject content.

Ø To use continuous evaluation approaches to diagnose weakness and strengths of the teaching learning strategy.

Ø To identify the weaker and, brighter children in order to adopt remedial measures and undertake enrichment programmers. 

               (5) Educational Activities Related Competency.

            The curricular activities are expected to promote cognitive development of children as well as non-cognitive development. So here the competencies required by a teacher are:

·           Ability to organize curricular and co-curricular activities for achieving educational objectives.

·           Ability to organize social and cultural activities like morning assembly, days celebration etc. 

               (6) Competencies to Develop Teaching Learning Material

        It includes:

·        Ability to develop interesting teaching aids for making teaching learning process easy, interesting and activity based.

·        Ability to develop textual and self-learning material for children as per their age and nature.

·         Ability to adapt/adopt the teaching learning materials to meet the educational needs of children with special needs including children from disadvantaged groups and working children.

·        Knowledge as how to develop work-books and activity books.

·        Ability to use electronic gadgets like Computers, CDs etc. to make teaching learning process more effective and interesting. 

(7) Evaluation/Assessment Competencies

                                            It involves the ability of a teacher to continuously judge and verify the level of achievement of prescribed competencies and objective laid down in the curriculum on the part of students is generally referred to as Evaluation Competency.

Ø Teachers should be able to carry out continuous evaluation in a systematic and formal manner.

Ø Ability to maintain observation records to evaluate likes and dislikes habits, value and attitudes of the children.

Ø Ability to diagnose the problem that children face in comprehending what is taught.

Ø Ability to undertake action research.

(8) Management Competencies

                                  It involves the skill of the teacher to achieve high quality educational objectives in minimum time, energy and money through appropriate and effective use of educational aids and active participation of available human resources. Every teacher is a manager of a particular class or group of students.

Ø Teacher should have the skill of classroom management including total teaching as well as subject teaching in the class. 

(9)    Competencies Related to Working with Parents

                                  It is the ability of a teacher to get the co-operation of parents and their involvement for achieving the objective. It implies the ability to discuss various problems that children with their parents face and suggest some workable solution. 

(10)              Competencies Related to Working with Community and Other Agencies.

                               To improve the standard of education in schools, teacher needs to seek co-operation and support of members of the community as well. Teacher must have the ability to work towards bringing school and the community as close as possible and inter-related. Teacher must be able to understand the role of the community in the development of the school and community at large can contribute to regular and effective functioning of the school and its continuous growth.

                   Thus, the above mentioned competencies are significant and need to be developed among teacher to make them professionally competent. It will help to improve quality of education.

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The professional competencies needed for a good teacher and for his teaching may be classified under the three major competencies namely

 Instructional Competences, Organisation Competences and Evaluative Competences.

Instructional Competences

Conceptual Competence

Context Competence

Transactional Competence

Competences to develop teaching learning materials.

Competences related to use of latest information and

Communication Technologies in Teaching Learning

Process

Organization Competences

Competences related to identifying resource.

Competences related to mobilize resource.

Management Competence

Adjustment Competence

Competence related to organization co- curricular activities.

Competence related to working /dealing with parents.

Competence related to working with community and community members.

Co-ordination Competence

Evaluative Competence

Construct evaluative items. Conduct tests.

Assessment procedures.

Interpretation of results.

Acquired with new trends in evaluation

It is the primary task of any nation that it should give highest importance and highest effort in producing  good teachers. In order to do so, it should provide ample opportunities to the teachers & teacher educators to be well equipped with the professional competences and adopting the professional ethics